Another user Dream

I guess these things happen in clusters.

I have this friend whom I’ll call Leggs. Maybe I’ll go into that at another time, in another post. Leggs has this unnatural ability to find the negative thought, action or circumstance into a beautiful thing. Many people have this skill with little effort. The truly wonderful thing about Leggs, is that it is a truly organic thing. In other words she does not look to find a positive from a negative, there is no dark side in her realm.

The other night I must have been infected with her outlook, because, though I may have had another user dream, it was, oddly enough, an enlightening one!

For the longest time I was addicted to cooking. I found my identity from it, I made my living from it and mostly loved to create food that made others happy. The truth is, there was no high greater than creating and presenting a meal to a stranger and seeing the smile my creation produced.

That outlet of creativity ended about the time my full blown chemical addiction took over.

In the dream, I was hired as the personal chef to some very important person, I am not sure who it was, in dream world these things can be either be important or not.

In my dream, my first task as chef was to make the “Picture soup.” Well, being the new guy, I did not want to ask a silly question, so I looked high and low for the recipe for Picture soup. I searched recipe books in the house. I found an old box of written and clipped recipes. I tried to get to know the other staff and illicit knowledge from them. I spoke with the markets I was to deal with without coming out and asking what to do. I looked around the house to see if there was a special picture with the family dining with soup. All to no avail.

I even went to my father, the most humble yet best cook I knew, to see if he had any knowledge of what a Picture soup was. There was this guy I worked with many years before, who was a font of experience and cooking skill. He was the type of guy who could impart knowledge without even trying. One time I asked him for a simple pasta recipe and in less than five minutes he gave me five easy yet elegant ones, yet he was unable to help me with this task.

The time was coming for service and I still had no idea what to do. In desperation, I called the staff together and told them of my trouble. The all looked at each other and smiled. Some one, remember this is a dream, pulled out a magazine, opened it to a page with a picture of a soup on it, “The Picture Soup. All you had to do was ask.”

As I pulled the magazine from her hands, I woke up. And as with most user dreams I was still a little disoriented, yet I had an even stranger feeling. It was of satisfaction. It was a much better feeling than the feeling I had the other night, yet I still don’t know what the “Picture soup” was.

olc

User Dreams

The other night I had a dream. It was such a powerful dream that it woke me up from a deep sleep, sweating and nervous. As with most dreams the details faded quickly, but I attempted to remember what I could. (Note to self: keep a pad of paper to help with remembering this kind of thing.) The first part of it is foggy. It had something to do with the-mother-of-my-daughter and the road to hell we both shared.

In my dream, it is called a User Dream, I was with the Runtyun's mother and she was trying to get some drugs and I think we must have gotten some because we pulled our sticks out and, I think, get everything ready to use them. I seem to remember finally lighting the rock and hearing the crackle of melting... This is where I usually wake feeling the disorientation of it all. 

This time though, there was a pause in the dream. How do I describe it? If you are watching TV and the program ends, but the commercial is not queued up there is a black spot in time when you know something will be coming up and waiting is the only thing to do.

After the pause in my dream, everything changed, as they do in dreams. I was much older and clean for a long time, but I had finally given into the constant desire to succumb. Somehow, I had attained a used stem with lots of residue and I was trying to find more of the shit to use. In the dream, my greatest desire was to scrape that pipe and smoke the residue.

As I was trying to score, the stem seemed to grow and grow, from the size of a thin pencil it grew, until it would not fit in my pocket. While it was growing, I still could not score any dope. Finally it got so large I had to carry it with two hands and still I could not get anything to put in it. In the dream, the stem got so large I had to throw it over my shoulder like a soldier does with a rifle. I was desperate to fill that pipe!

Finally, and I don't know how or why, I just got fed up with the whole thing. I could not get anything to put into the stem, so I could not get high. The pipe was getting so big I could not carry it any more. I finally found a trash can and broke the glass pipe into a million pieces and...woke up.

In most cases during these dreams I will wake up and feel only the residual effects of that horrible poison. This time though, it was a full blown mind bending hit that was attacking me. I was disoriented, slightly dizzy and euphoric. And I wanted more.

Those in recovery, and are honest with themselves, will know that we will always have temptation eating away at our resolve. I went over the mental steps I have developed to help me through moments of crisis.

First I thought about the time and energy I have invested in getting better. Then thoughts of my Runtyun flowed and how much she depends on me to show a better life. My parents and the investment they made in me to get out of the terrible rut I was in. Then lastly, a Shakespeare quote came to mind. Actually, I recite it to myself a lot. It has become a kind of mantra when I have to make moral/value decisions. “To thine own self be true.”

I woke from that dream and struggled with temptation and I WON!

I have not had any of these user dreams for a long time. I have been living drug free for many years, almost seven and a half, I think. I have heard that the dreams seem to fade away after time. For the most part, it is true, when I first stopped using, the dreams were so intense that I almost gave into the urge. Yet after time they faded in both frequency and intensity. They still however, creep into my unconscience sleep once in awhile. The other night was the most intense and most realistic I have had in years.  My life has not changed in any way significant way, I still struggle along. I still have my Runtyun to give me smiles even though she is becoming a young adult and challenges every thing.

I do not know what triggered my dream. I have thought about the things that used to trouble me and have beaten those triggers, or at least we have come to an uneasy truce. 

I guess the best take away is that I have not restarted any bad habits and actually feel stronger for beating, once again, the strong temptation to do stupid.

Olc